My Paranormal Valentine: A Paranormal Romance Box Set

by Michelle M. Pillow

It sounded lame, even to my own ears, but frankly, he was scaring me. I didn’t like the feeling. Babel still hadn’t answered me, and I fought to keep my free hand from grabbing the handle.

  Silently, he stared at me. I looked away when I could no longer meet his stare. His fingers changed, elongated over mine. His palms became thick and rough, scratching the skin on the back of my hand. My pulse raced, and my fear doubled.

  “Stop,” he growled, his voice taking on a distinctly inhuman quality.

  “You stop,” I quipped, trying to sound brave. “I’m not the one going all doggy bits.”

  “No, but you’re making it hard.”

  I glanced at his hand, it had become unrecognizable. Like something out of the Howling. Beyond that, the bulge in his pants was pronounced. Apparently, I was making all sorts of things hard.

  “I’d like to go now.” Said the fly to the spider. “Uhm, if that’s all right. You know, things to see, people to do…” Wrong cliché. Oy.

  Once I’d watched this nature documentary on PBS, and the host, John Somethingoranother, had said that when faced by a wild animal you should hold perfectly still. Don’t run. I think he’d been talking about a bear, so I wasn’t sure if it would work with a man-beast situation. But I froze like an ice sculpture just in case. Even when his right hand whipped across his body with ungodly speed and fisted my hair, I kept my movement and noise to a flinch and a squeak.

  Babel leaned in close, his nose pressing against my neck. He inhaled deeply. The exhalation came out as an agitated rumble. His tongue flicked my jaw.

  I released a shaky breath as my lower parts clinched. “Babel. Please don’t.” It might have been more convincing if my fear hadn’t been mixed with a tinge of excitement and a dose of lust.

  He made a chuffing sound right before his hot mouth pressed against my lips. Sirens went off in my brain, but my body responded. Babel’s tongue slid along the crack of my lips, forcing them apart. He tasted of maple syrup. Mmmm.

  The heat from his skin warmed mine. A swooping sensation rolled in my stomach. Before I could stop myself, I grabbed a handful of his shirt, closed my eyes tightly, and leaned into his chest. I apologized to all the deities I’d made deals with for being a liar liar pants on fire, then met his kiss with a fevered rush. He let go of my hand clamped to his thigh and wrapped his arms around me.

  My tongue brushed a sharp and elongated canine followed by a sharp sting and the salty taste of blood. A coil of nausea unwound its way to my throat as visions of Babel and Judah as children playing ball, sharing meals, and secrets. Babel looked up to Judah like most little brothers. The depth of his grief choked me, and at that moment, I knew I would do anything to take it from him.

  So I swallowed it, every bit of his grief. I took it into my body, my mind. I don’t know how, or even if it was real, but I could feel the tension leave his muscles. His hands slid up my ribs to my breasts. The coarse pads of his palms took my breath, but the thick, sharp fingernails popped the bubble of fantasy and reality sank in.

  I was making out on Main Street in broad daylight with Manimal.

  When the rock cracked against the windshield, I realized I wasn’t the only one to notice.

  I scrambled back from Babel with a yelp. Outside the car, Sheila Murphy already had her arm reared, ready to throw again.

  “Oh, shit.” I ducked as another rock whacked against the windshield. “You fucking bitch,” she screamed. “I’m going to kill you!”

  “She’s goddamn crazy,” Babel muttered.

  “Ya think?” Holy crap. Crazy was stalking in my direction. I popped the lock down on the door. Sheila’s lips contorted into a maniacal smile.

  “Oh, shit,” I repeated.

  Tempered glass shattered in all around me in little chunks as Sheila put her fist through the window. I scrambled across Babel’s lap to the passenger side. Babel jumped out, and in a single bound, he leaped over the car, landing directly behind the woman trying to tear my head off.

  My heart went to my throat, thick and pounding, as she grabbed my ankle and yanked me half out of the car. I screamed, because, well, I was half out of my mind with terror, then kicked out with my free leg and got a lucky strike to her face.

  She didn’t let go. Frankly, I think it just pissed her off even more. Before she could wrench me completely out onto the sidewalk, Babel wrapped his forearm around her neck, and with his other hand, he snatched her loose from my ankle.

  He tossed Sheila like pizza dough, and the woman went flying into the brick wall of the craft store. With another leap, Babel was crouched next to her. Instead of getting up and trying to kick the shit out him, Sheila surprised me. She started sobbing.

  Babel took her in his arms, and let me just say, I felt like the world’s biggest boob. The woman tried to kill me, for the second time, and Babel was comforting her. I hated him so much. Hated him! Maybe I didn’t have the right to feel betrayed—we were not going steady, and she’d seen him first, obviously—but he’d really pissed me off.

  “Now, now,” I heard him say softly. “Why’d you have to go and wreck my car?”

  Not, “why are you messing with Sunny?” Not, “leave Sunny alone!” Or something helpful like that. The bastard was only troubled about his beater.

  Sheila cried harder, her mess of long brown hair falling haphazardly across her face.

  She looked more beautiful, if possible. I hated her so much.

  “I heard about Judah,” Sheila said, her voice all choked and gravelly.

  A tiny wince of guilt fluttered inside. Very tiny. I’d managed to get my legs to stop shaking long enough to stand up from the car. I used that momentum to walk across the street toward my shop.

  “Sunny,” Babel said loud enough to get my attention.

  I didn’t turn around. I didn’t want to see him holding her. They were grieving. Fine. They had a shared emotional bond that didn’t include me. Fine. But it didn’t mean I had to stick around to watch. Assuming he was watching me go, I waved my hand to let him know I was all right but kept pace all the way to the door.

  Inside the restaurant, I sat on the floor with my back to the wall. I worried for Babel. For a big strapping guy, he had a lot of emotions buried deep. I wasn’t so sure I could help him, especially since he’d almost shifted on me. Maybe I was bad for him, and vice versa. Probably Sheila understood him in ways I never could. When I stopped feeling sorry for myself (well, not completely), I cracked the front door and took a peek.

  Babel, Sheila, and the car were gone. Fantastic. I stepped out onto the sidewalk. Yep. Gone. Fuckers. I hated them both.

  Turning back toward the restaurant, I saw Delbert and Elbert outside their store, chuckling and talking softly to each other. I wondered if it was some twin-speak thing going on.

  “What are you guys up to?” Maybe they hadn’t seen the Terminator reenactment.

  “Just chewing the fat.”

  “Just shooting the shit,” they said almost simultaneously. It was hard to tell where one began and the other ended.

  “Hmmm.”

  I strolled across the street to them and looked each man over. I noticed one had a slightly thinner face, though it was hard to tell under the snow-white beard. The one with the heavier face had a tiny blond freckle next to the outer corner of his left eye.

  I pointed to the freckle. “Which one are you?” Talking with the Johnsons was calming for some odd reason. Besides, they were a much needed distraction.

  The thinner-faced brother laughed. “You’re the psychic. You tell us?”

  “Ha. Ha. Very funny.” So, my little problem had become town gossip. Two could play this game. “You two are hilarious for a couple of opossums.” Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Johnson twins.

  They didn’t seem in the least offended. “Well now, you’re a little spitfire for a looney.”

  I rolled my eyes. How much did they really know? How much did the whole town know? “What? Did you all have some sort of town-hall meeting about me
?” Freckle snorted. “Sure.” His brother nodded with a knowing grin.

  I touched the thinner-faced Johnson on the arm and got a quick flash. I smiled back at him. “Delbert, Peggy’s gonna be pissed if you go fishing and miss dinner one more time. She’s a pretty delicate woman, but I have a feeling she could take you in a fair fight.”

  Delbert’s smile faded, for two beats of a heart. Then he chuckled. “Wooo,” he hooted. “Nice one.”

  Elbert shook his head. “I like you, Sunny. Watch yourself. Sheila is an unpredictable bitch, and Brady…Well, he’s become a bit…unstable over the years.” He patted my arm warmly.

  Awww, I made some more friends. I guess they had seen the fight along with Brady Corman’s little tirade. Nosey neighbors.

  “Thanks.” I frowned. “Did you know Judah well?”

  “Well enough, I suppose.” Elbert again.

  “Did you see or remember anything weird around the time he disappeared?” The sheriff and Babel had probably asked this question already, but it couldn’t hurt to ask again.

  “Nothing I can think of.”

  “Me either.” A little twitch over Delbert’s eyebrow made me reach out and touch his hand, and I got a flash of Judah under the awning with the twins, all of them laughing, then nothing more. The visions were coming much more frequently and less hard-hitting, but still pretty much useless

  “What about Chavvah? Did she seem okay when you saw her last? Did she say anything? Was there anyone hanging around more than normal?”

  “Whoa, missy. Slow it down,” Delbert said.

  Elbert sucked his teeth. “I can’t really recall seeing Chavvie too concerned, though she was upset that one time…”

  “Yeah, I remember,” Delbert added. “Doc Smith had just been with her, along with Neville and the sheriff. Not sure what went on there. You’ll have to ask them. That was probably the last time I saw her.”

  “I saw her a couple of days after, going out of town in her little yellow Bug.”

  I’d forgotten Chavvah had a Volkswagen. I hadn’t even wondered where it had gone. Some detective I was turning out to be, and jeezus, why hadn’t I talked to the Johnson twins sooner? I hugged Delbert, then after, I gave Elbert the same. I’d never seen men turn so red. Even their ears were the color of beets. I smiled.

  When I put my hand on Delbert to apologize, I had another flash of vision. Judah coming out of the restaurant at night. He looked angry, his fists clenching and unclenching, the sound of jangling keys clinking with each tight movement. Sheila Murphy came out next; she was tucking her shirt in. Eww. She tried to kiss Judah and he pushed her back. He jumped in his truck and took off, leaving her out in front of the store.

  The vision stopped there.

  I gazed up at Delbert. “Did you see a fight between Sheila and Judah?”

  His brows raised then he shook his head. “More times than I can count. Nothing new there.”

  I didn’t doubt fighting had been a regular thing for anyone and Sheila. She was a whole bag of nuts and then some. But did I really believe she could be responsible for Judah’s death? Maybe? She definitely had the temper and temperament for it, but the grief I’d seen earlier had been real, not manufactured. Besides, she might stab him with a butcher knife, maybe, but the whole hunting thing was calculated.

  “Yeah, I guess so,” I finally said. I was really grossed out by the fact that she’d had a relationship with Judah. She’d been sleeping with him, I could tell that much from the vision. And now she was sleeping with his little brother. Yuck and yuck. “She really is a crazy bitch.”

  Elbert laughed. Delbert smiled, but it was tight, fake.

  “Oh, nearly forgot.” He went inside his store and came back out seconds later with a manila envelope. “Neville Lutjen stopped at your shop earlier when you weren’t there.

  He had these.” He handed me the envelope. “I told him I’d give it to you.”

  “Thanks,” I said. Maybe it was the licensing paperwork. I really hadn’t given much thought to the restaurant. If I couldn’t find Chav, it wouldn’t matter anyhow. “See you guys around.”

  Back in the apartment, I set the envelope on the small kitchen table. Soon, I grew bored, bored, bored. Chavvah hadn’t had cable installed in the building. I would have killed for my Supernatural DVDs, but I was too lazy to find the box they were in. (Watching Jensen Ackles was my comfort food.) So, I retrieved the diner check with the secret codes and tried to decipher it, still not completely convinced I’d be able to make heads or tails of the clue. If nothing else, it was a great way to keep from thinking about Babel and how exactly he and Sheila might be comforting each other.

  Some of the numbers seemed familiar, but I couldn’t figure out from where. I tried treating the numbers and letters like an anagram, but there were too many zeros for a word puzzle to work. It couldn’t be a binary code, too many other numbers besides zero and one. Maybe the letters were the key: JT, RC, GH. JoT, ReC, Go Home? Nah. In desperation, I tried holding on to the slip of paper, hoping for some kind of revealing vision—after all, I’d been getting them regularly since I hit town.

  Nothing.

  I sighed.

  Hell, Judah could have been playing a mad game of Sudoku for all I knew, and the scribbles of letters and numbers could mean absolutely nothing. It was seven in the evening when I finally gave up. I tucked the diner check into my pocket and decided to go back downstairs to get the metal box. Maybe I’d missed something in it earlier.

  I didn’t think I would, but I missed California. Here it was, a Friday night, and I had no real friends to call, no date to speak of, and I’d never felt so intensely alone. I heard a bark at the bottom of the stairs. Okay, so, intensely alone except for one ghost coyote.

  I stepped out onto the hardwood floors. “Hey, Judah. Got something new for me?”

  A shadow of movement to the right caught my eye. I barely had enough time to look over when a large, dark figure slammed me against the wall. I didn’t see that coming. Silly, silly, me.

  The thing towered over me, his body a warm press of fur hard against me. Its hot breath blew against my face. My knees began to shake uncontrollably even as I willed them to stop.

  Sharp fingernails dug into my arms and shoulders. I couldn’t tell what he looked like, or even if it was a he. I’d been assuming, but it was too dark. It pressed its malformed mouth to my hair and spoke. “You need a lesson in minding your own business.”

  Horror, sheer and discernable, ripped through me. I had a major visceral reaction to the guttural voice. Pure fear. I tried to yank away from the shifter, but it was too strong. The lesson came as a swift backhanded slap across my face. My jaw snapped as I crumpled to the floor. I heard the snick-snack of fingernails clicking while the hairy beast seemed to ponder what to do with me next.

  Unable to speak, to ask why or even plead for my life, I pulled a Rover as I went limp and played dead. A thunderous kick landed on my ribs. The air whooshed from my lungs as pain burst in all directions, making me think death might be a better option. He didn’t touch me again. Kicking me had been his parting soliloquy.

  I lay still for a good half hour, the numbness had soon worn off and the pain in my face was nearly debilitating. Somehow, I managed to drag myself up on an elbow then finally I was sitting up against the wall. I tried to speak, to call for help, but my lower jaw refused to work and my tongue was swelling inside my mouth.

  As it were, I had a couple of choices: lie here until someone found me, drag myself upstairs and use my cell phone to call for help, or try to get to the police station three blocks up the road. Lying there and waiting was my favorite option, because the other two involved painful movements.

  Where was Babel? It was unreasonable to expect him to ride in wearing a white hat and rescue me, but if I ever needed the rescue, now was the time. Babel would take charge. He’d know what to do. I’d never been needy, but as the pain worsened in my face and ribs, I knew I needed help. I wanted the help to come from
Babel, but at this point any ol’ hero would do.

  I considered going upstairs for the phone, but I couldn’t form words, and the blood in my mouth meant I’d probably bit through my tongue (the swelling didn’t help either). So, I had to drag myself out onto the dimly lit street and travel the short distance to the police station.

  I shuddered at the prospect.

  Thrice now, I’d been attacked. Once by a shifter in full animal form, then Babel’s psychotic girlfriend (who was probably my first attacker as well), and now by a shifter in its half-n-half state of transformation. What if it waited outside for me?

  I had no idea whether it had been a male or female. Could it have been Sheila? Maybe it had been Tyler Thompson. He’d been downright hostile. Or Brady Corman? Or someone I hadn’t even figured into the equation.

  I recalled Delbert and Elbert. The town had had a meeting. They knew I was a psychic, and while I was certain there would be a bunch of people who wouldn’t believe, I was beginning to think there might be a few who wouldn’t want to take a chance on me discovering something they wanted to keep hidden.

  Through the pain, anger rose to the surface.

  The front doorbell jangled. I froze. Oh, God. He’s come back.

  Chapter Thirteen

  I STILLED MY heavy breathing, but it was hard to be quiet with a clogged nose and a swollen tongue. For the umpteenth time, I felt certain I was going to die. Feeling around the floor, I couldn’t find anything to use as a weapon. If I was going to get mauled again, I wanted to do some damage as well.

  “Sunny?” I heard a young man’s voice. Familiar. Jo Jo.

  I whimpered my relief. I tried to say his name, but it came out as a muffled mess.

  “Son of a…Sunny. Just hold still.” Jo Jo kneeled next to me.

  I winced when he touched my face. He tried to keep the horror out of his voice, but couldn’t keep it off his face. I hurt too bad to care.

  “I’m going to get the sheriff,” he said with sudden determination. “Try not to move.”

  Grateful, I nodded. The pain made me sorry for the gesture. I don’t know if I’d passed out, but it seemed like a very short time had passed between Jo Jo finding me and the sheriff and his men coming in. Someone had turned on the lights.